This very interesting study, which showed good outcomes with a one-step cartilage repair technique, was published in a top US sports journal this past November.
Unfortunately, the study was quite small, with only 26 patients, and it did not have a control group. In summary, this study population was of an average age of 48 with an average lesion size of 6.6 cm and 14-year outcomes. Four patients were considered treatment failures, but the other 22 appeared to have excellent results.
This product is not available in the United States. It is a membrane made of hyaluronic acid, a liquid we use for injection routinely, combined with bone marrow aspirate concentrate (a product we use routinely to optimize healing). Hopefully, the FDA will make it easier to approve products such as these without costly studies that take years. As long as a product is deemed safe, it sometimes seems better to let the doctors and patients decide if it is worth trying than to limit our options so severely.
Read the complete study in The American Journal of Sports Medicine.
Image via https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Chemical-structure-of-hyaluronic-acid_fig4_339321466 under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, modified to adjust size and clarity.